In the early 1980s, I was doing ethnographic interviews with Punks in Toronto. The video tape was funny to watch afterwards. You can’t see me on the tape but you can hear the discomfort in my voice off camera. I was out of my depth. I didn’t know where to start the interview or what to ask. More embarrassingly, it’s clear I was quietly terrified. Terrified and clueless, the anthropologist’s best moment.

I was thinking about punks the other day when blogging about the "society of strangers."

The society of strangers says we don’t have to know the people around us to live with them. We don’t have to have to be bound to them by "trust neworks."

Punks go right after this. They present us with someone who looks threatening. Those mohawks, tattoos, safety pins, ripped clothing, black leather jackets send a message. (I still have a leather jacket from the exhibit we did at the Royal Ontario Museum. The back reads: "Help the Police, Beat yerself up." No, I don’t wear it.)

Our reaction: "how nervous should I be?" "What order of threat is this?" The punk finds a way to say, "if I am prepared to disregard my own comforts and niceties, can I be relied upon to respect yours?" The logic of the (pre-1990s) tattoo was even clearer: "if I am prepared to inflict this act of violence upon myself, think do you think what I am prepared to do to you?"

The deeper cultural logic was still clearer. By breaking the "soft rules" of civil life (social conventions), Punks signaled the possibility they might be prepared to break the "hard rules"of civil life (the ones defined and enforced by law). (I am setting aside the larger cultural and political messages of punk.)

Punks are, in other words, a test of the limits of a society of strangers. They introduce a very strange stranger, one who gives us pause. (Finally, this was more agitprop theater than reality. For all their talk of anarchy, most punks weren’t very anarchic. Conventionally dressed soccer hooligans are much more dangerous.)

Punks were a test of whether we meant what we said. Did people have the liberty to define themselves as they wanted to, or not? In the period following World War II, we were, in a sense, cheating. The forces of convention were still so powerful that the society of strangers wasn’t very strange at all. Most people could read most people pretty well. Most marginal groups were marginal, driven by stigma and exclusion from the mainstream. In effect, we had were a pluralist society that permitted freedom but had not yet had to contend with freedom. We were living a lie. (No cliché is unwelcome in this blog. We are inclusive here too.)

Then marginal cultures began to demand a new voice and profile…and now the test was on. As someone who came of age in the 1960s, I remember how long hair was received. It was customary for people to react badly, sometimes insisting, in a classic Douglasian moment, that they were witnessing a confusion of gender categories and that the wearer "must be a girl." (I remember Rodney Graham one summer in Banff threatening to remove his pants to answer the challenge.)

The test has continued. As marginal groups have insisted on a more visible place in the mainstream, we found ourselves with stranger strangers. At first, we reacted badly. The various youth cultures, lesbians, gays, all took a good deal of grief and, sometimes, acts of violence. (As of course some still do.)

Then came a relative rapprochement. As a collectivity, we discovered that these "differences" weren’t so different. Punks might look threatening, but eventually they became merely one more part of the urban landscape. Most people discovered the wisdom, or at least the usefulness, of the New Yorkers standard response to the blooming variety of that urban setting: "Whatever, buddy. Do what you wanna. Just don’t ask me to like it." Now we could go back to business as usual. Benign neglect was the order of the day. It might be better to call this, in the New York style, "disgruntled neglect."

And this is why the Protestant Right has responded so ferociously to gay marriage. Now a marginal group was asking not just for neglect but for inclusion in the very institution that the Protestant church had made the sacred moral ground of the family. Gay marriage violated the "disgruntled neglect" rule. In my opinion, it is entitled to do so. Let us keep an eye on this test of our inclusiveness.

But for the rest of us, disgruntled neglect remains the order of the day. Except when it provokes the sensitivities of a particular group, difference is tolerated. We discovered that the society of strangers could expand very considerably…and that was ok.

The post on plastic surgery (4 posts ago) suggests that we may have new differences on the way. An encounter with the lion-like Bride of Wildenstein in a New York restaurant would almost certainly give me pause (paws?).

But I’d get over it. Because, 25 years after my first face-to-face encounter with a crusty punk, I know the society of strangers can encompass even this. It’s a good thing I finally got the news. Because the real difference engine isn’t a computer, it’s a culture, our culture.

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13 thoughts on “stranger strangers as a test of liberty”

hello, I know this is quite personal to ask this and i know that you may not know it. But i would greatly apriciate it if you could give me Ms. Lauraine LeBlanc’s e-mail address because i am doing a subcultural book on Metal. and even though “pretty in punk” is about punks. punk and metal are close kin and i would love to ask her questions on how to get started and about why she did not include the metal subculture in her book…
i understand if you think i am being obtrusive or if you do not know her e-mail address…
thank you,
Lyz LeSage

i think she’s missing the whole point of “punk”. punks are not trying to look threatening to common people. a tatoo in no ways implies violent acts, and so on. punk music is meant to be a liberating experience and punks are people who understand this. it has nothing to do with politics, but the punk ethic of holism, indivisuality, creativity, and freedom imply that we can all live off eachother as a society of people rather than under a hierarchy. being involved in the punk scene, i find your comments to be oppisite of the truth.

hi…i just want you to know that being a Crusty punk doesnt ONLY mean that you dont take showers. it’s also a way of life, the type of music you listen to. there’s a huge difference between street punks and crusty punks, and no one seems to know the difference. most crusty’s are Vegans, and they have morals. you know? like Conflict, they’re a crust band in a way..but ehh yeah. I used to be a crusty, and i know what the fuck its about. i hate how these kids now and days pretend to be something they’re not and not know SHIT about what they’re claiming to be. I HATE IT!!!!!! FUCK YOU!!!!!

Ok, look, all of you are missing out on the point. The anthropologist himself even admitted he didn’t know what he was getting himself into. Punk is not a way of life. It isn’t the way you dress, the way your personal cleaning methods are, it isn’t about trying to look tough, or talk a lot of crap. It was originally about the music. Some of it was shit, but at least it was real. No subculture is real now, save for metal, punk’s tougher more depressed brother. And, still people still try to rape that subculture even. That is exactly what it is, my friends, RAPE. Punk is raped, metal is raped, rock is raped, goth is raped. Raped by people who want to be “different” and claim the way they look is the way they are. The truth is, subcultures have become lies people hide behind. The real subcultures don’t exist anymore, except for the real punks, goths, metal, and rock n’ rollers. And one doesn’t see them out on the street with a huge black sign saying “look at me please! Aren’t I tough”
look, you may hate what i say all you want. But this is the truth as I see it. I don’t know what you think. I don’t care, either. This is the way the world works, it corrupts, ruins and rapes. Nothing is real, so don’t believe what you see or hear. Don’t even believe this paragraph. Go out into the streets, the world. See it how it really is.

Ok, look, all of you are missing out on the point. The anthropologist himself even admitted he didn’t know what he was getting himself into. Punk is not a way of life. It isn’t the way you dress, the way your personal cleaning methods are, it isn’t about trying to look tough, or talk a lot of crap. It was originally about the music. Some of it was shit, but at least it was real. No subculture is real now, save for metal, punk’s tougher more depressed brother. And, still people still try to rape that subculture even. That is exactly what it is, my friends, RAPE. Punk is raped, metal is raped, rock is raped, goth is raped. Raped by people who want to be “different” and claim the way they look is the way they are. The truth is, subcultures have become lies people hide behind. The real subcultures don’t exist anymore, except for the real punks, goths, metal, and rock n’ rollers. And one doesn’t see them out on the street with a huge black sign saying “look at me please! Aren’t I tough”
look, you may hate what i say all you want. But this is the truth as I see it. I don’t know what you think. I don’t care, either. This is the way the world works, it corrupts, ruins and rapes. Nothing is real, so don’t believe what you see or hear. Don’t even believe this paragraph. Go out into the streets, the world. See it how it really is.

I am a crusty and proud. I’m not a vegan, it’s just a choice I haven’t made. I have very strong morals and political stances and yeah, I do smell bad but it pisses the fuck out of me when I see these kids who call themselves crusty. There like, well, I’m not showering, I think I’ll call my self a crusty. I’m not trying to force my oppinion on anyone but, punk is not all what you look like or smell like, it’s music beliefs and being part of the scene.
maybe that’s just me.

punk is word….thats it..
you are who you are…
we are all the same because we are different…
no need for lables…im into crust but im not vegan, im a vegetarian i beleive in many things..im for the A.L.F…i dont shower alot maybe twice a month or so…
and besides why should anyone care if youre a crust or not?
as a result,

Punk is very subjective, in my opinion. Considering Punk to be freedom, creativity, individuality, it’s really hard to say someone is actually a “punk”. The same way, it’s hard to hear someone saying “Im a punk”. Punks shouldnt be all “Mohawks” and stuff, since they start to get similar.
The way I understand Punk’s ideolody, Punk is not dressing what you want, is not saying what you want… whatever. Punk is doing everything you want, not impairing the others.

Well, but it’s my understanding about Punk culture. I think many of the other definitions are either poser or irrational